Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Great artwork, but the actual execution could be much better. I particularily dislike the reliance on layer 5.

Original eyecandy, good gameplay, and some excellent ideas, particularily the incorporation of the ice. There isn’t anything in this level that’s likely to just make you go “wow,” though.

These are very good levels, but nothing here really screams “instant classic” to me – likely to be forgotten in a year or two.
That said, they ARE good levels. The only one I actually dislike is King of the Clouds; it flows too poorly to be fun to play in.
I also think the eyecandy’s been a bit overrated; it’s good, but often messy.

The pseudo-3D style here is amazing, but the tile layout is terrible. If a user can get past the layout, however, you can create a truly spectacular-looking level.
Another huge drawback is the lack of usable slopes.

A very uniquely designed level. Powerups and carrots are superbly placed. Perhaps the level’s most unusual feature is the area at the top, somewhat isolated from the rest of the level; it contains a lot of RF ammo and (of course) a seeker powerup.
It’s unfortunate that there are so many easily campable areas, however.

Snooze: People are very frequently requesting that I upload my levels to J2O. Seriously. And if anything, the fact that I’m unsure of its quality is even more reason to upload it; I can learn what to improve.

Ragnarok wanted more reviews for this, and I can see why. The level pretty much oozes polish and quality.

The level is notable for taking advantage of JJ2+‘s capability to have very long respawn times, as well as initial spawn delays. It’s also notable for not abusing said capability.

It’s a fairly typical level aside from that. Powerups, carrots, and ammo are all well-placed. Pits are present, but they honestly feel like they were added for flavor rather than gameplay reasons.

One unusual feature is the seeker powerup that can only be obtained by those with a sugar rush. Whether anyone will ever actually get it or not is anyone’s guess.

The level’s primary selling point is definitely its visuals. It is excellently and consistently decorated throughout, with quite a few creative methods of tileset usage.

What really caught me, though, was the level’s general lack of flaws. There are no usable camping spots, no spammable weapons, nothing of the sort.

Overall, this is a rare gem of a level, and should be treated as such.

The tileset looks all right, but it’s entirely lacking in extra decoration. Besides the token background hills and precious few “variety” tiles, there’s nothing of the sort, in fact. Hence, any level created with it will be terribly bland, and so I cannot really give this a download recommendation, but it deserves a decent score for effort.

Versatile and nice-looking for the most part, but some things, most notably the second set of destruct blocks, are pretty poorly done, though that’s probably to be expected of something like an LMAT set.

It took me a while to decide how to approach reviewing this pack. As others have stated, its quality is…variable, to say the least. So I’ve decided to split the review into three sections: one on the levels I really like, one on the levels that are passable, and one on the levels that just don’t work. In that order, because it will make the ending that much funnier.

So, first. The best levels. Opinions vary, of course, but I’d say Technologized Sonicwaves, Pleased with Presents, and Hard Cheese qualify.

Technologized Sonicwaves is a very well-designed and well-constructed CTF level. It has few flaws if any, and is highly suitable for both duels and larger games. As with most such levels, however, there is not a lot to say about it.

Pleased with Presents is a battle level which I actually helped quite a bit with, as far as design decisions and balancing, although admittedly most of this was in its earliest stages. In particular, I am afraid that I am to blame for the belts. I beg forgiveness from anyone who has fallen into a pit because of them.
That aside, the level has a nice, learnable layout, and good eyecandy (although the background may be a bit too strange for its own good). Its biggest drawback is probably its inconsistent placement of Fly Off events – you can enter some indoor areas, but not others, while flying. Still, the level is fun to play in.

Hard Cheese is a simple, yet moderately unconventional, CTF level. It’s mostly horizontal, even moreso than most levels, and although you’d expect this to lead to a ton of awful bottlenecks, it actually works very well. I am not, however, especially fond of the eyecandy here – it feels like it was sort of thrown on in a rush, as the style is rather inconsistent.

Now, on to the levels that missed the proverbial mark in some way or another, but still manage to be (barely?) playable.

I’m going to start with Knight FurnFace. This is one of the most graphically striking levels ever made for JJ2, as the tileset lends itself to FawFul’s use extremely well. Unfortunately, this lovely eyecandy comes right back around and bites the level in its wrinkled 8-bit rump: it’s rather difficult to tell whether or not something is on layer 4 or 5 (or 3 and 2 in a few especially bad cases). This means lots of bumping into things and falling through things, probably into one of the level’s pits. Mercifully, a pitless version is included, but the level still requires memorization before it can be properly played.

Neglected Future is a level that, while nicely balanced and well-designed overall, has a lot of annoying quirks. I could describe them, but 30 seconds of playing will demonstrate.

Myopia is a level which suffers primarily from being too large for any fewer than 10 players, and even with 16 it feels rather too large, especially given the nature of its layout. If JJ2’s netcode were reworked (hey, BlurredD…wait, where are you going? BlurredD?) to support more connections, I have no doubt that this would make for some great 12vs12 games. But that hasn’t happened yet, so this level is not especially useful.

Radioactive is simply too boring to be given any more than an acknowledgement. Unlike pretty much every other level in the pack, there’s nothing unique about it, and when that’s added to the fact that it isn’t exceptionally well-made in the first place…

Alien Heart. This level has been played a lot, and I’m pretty sure that’s only by dint of there being so few Domination levels around. Although it’s playable, it’s not very enjoyable, especially with things like that seeker powerup…

Hideout Center I never got the chance to actually play, since Flag Run isn’t exactly the most popular gamemode around. It feels a bit too complicated for it, to be honest.

And now the part you’ve all probably skipped to: the bad levels. There’s just no excuse; they’re bad.

Favourite Park. Horrible usage of sucker tubes, and a limiting layout, combined with mediocre eyecandy.

8th Heaven could simply be described as an idea that seems good but isn’t. The towers make gameplay feel both limited and repetitive, and the pillars of light are downright silly.

Downtown Maze is pretty aptly named, because trying to navigate the level is like trying to navigate a maze. In other words, worst layout ever. Wait, no it isn’t; I forgot about…

Klassieker for the SnOOzE. I don’t like Snooze very much now, because if he hadn’t existed, we wouldn’t have to suffer this level. The bases are extremely close, the layout is small and very strange, and the level is terribly unbalanced – what were you THINKING with that seeker powerup?

Electric Factory…well, it’s not a serious level, and so shouldn’t be treated as such. I honestly can’t imagine anyone wanting to play it though.

But I’m basing my rating on the levels that ARE worth playing. And the pack is definitely worth downloading, just don’t be disappointed when the later levels don’t hold up to the standards set by the earlier ones.

PurpleJazz: I was going to add a textured background, then realized that I couldn’t think of anything that would fit. I could’ve just added a generic JJ2 textured background, but I doubt anyone would have actually used it.

sonicnathan: Which tiles are missing? PM me if you have to. Also, the animations in JJ1 have as many frames as they do in the tileset – you can’t complain about missing tiles AND complain about them taking too much space. Well, you can, but it doesn’t make much sense. I guess that’s what quick reviews are for, though.

I can’t really bring myself to give this a higher rating than I am. It’s a very small level, presumably intended for instagib, but it fails to pay attention to the necessary details in making such a level. It’s too open. Way too open. This means that the gameplay is thoroughly chaotic and luck-based, unless you have, say, a 10ms ping time.

This level is done. I’m not going to make any changes other than extremely small ones.

I knew when I uploaded it that it wasn’t very good, as you can perhaps gather from the description, but I didn’t feel I had any ability to improve it.

Fairly well-drawn and usable…but that’s it. There’s just absolutely nothing notable here, nothing that separates it from other tilesets. Nonetheless, it IS a good tileset – just not a great tileset.

Rather too similar to Happy Semiconductor for my tastes. I found the way the same tiles are on multiple layers to be rather confusing with regards to figuring out whether or not I can stand on something. Eyecandy is all right, but is rather messy and could be much improved.

A very nice level, but also extremely small. Play promises to be quite chaotic due to having three powerups and a shield all easily accessible. The eyecandy is extremely well done given the tileset used.

This is a somewhat typical, moderate-quality CTF level. To give you an idea of how typical: it uses Desolation.

It is rather small, and has one of the simplest layouts you’ll ever see (though “simple” shouldn’t imply “bad” here).

The eyecandy is…acceptable. It’s rather messy, to be honest, especially with all the random numbers in the background and the all the tile mixes, but it is a controlled messiness, and there are few tilebugs. The level doesn’t look bad, per se, but it is not about to make you gaze at your monitor in awe.

The gameplay is where the level’s true flaws begin to show. It contains two full energy carrots extremely close to each other that are rather too accessible for my liking – there are warps leading to them that are about twenty tiles from the bases, Spaz can jump straight up to them, and Jazz can do the same with the sacrifice of a single RF missile. This is not really ideal. Large games would see the carrots utterly swarmed, and duels would likely last for an unbearably long time with the easy access. At the very least, can you say “camp spot”?

The level’s flow is also far from being in a position to win any awards; expect to be constantly running into arbitrarily placed blocks.

In the end, this level is playable, but only barely. It is definitely not suited for “serious” games.

EDIT: The two easily-reachable carrots have been replaced with a single one that can no longer be obtained through jumping; you have to use the warps. This solves one problem but introduces another: it now uses an exit warp, which has two targets – one above each of the powerups. Powerups being a natural focus point, it is hard to restore your health without having it torn right off again. This, frankly, is not really an improvement. Also, 15 seconds is rather a short respawn time for a full energy carrot…

EDIT, ANOTHER ONE: In a lovely display of Can’t Leave It Alone, the warp has been done away, in favor of a one-way trigger gate. Unfortunately, this makes the camping aspect worse than ever; one can simply stand under the carrot tube and shoot forever, resting with the comfortable knowledge that they’ll hit any bloke dumb enough to try for the carrot. Furthermore, it’s now possible for someone to stick their fat rabbity butt at the end of the carrot tube itself, potentially followed by a wallclimb that will make them essentially invincible, while retaining the ability to rain death on any warp users before they even get the carrot. While this is only useful for that player’s team if the player actually has a team, it remains a complete gamebreaker.
To be fair, though, the carrot’s respawn time was at least made more reasonable. Or rather, what would be more reasonable if it were at all feasible to go after the bloody thing in the first place…

“MSPainty” is a good descriptor for the tileset. This is to say that it doesn’t look very good. It is very, very poorly drawn, I am afraid, and this ruins any hope of people using it in a level; therefore, I consider it nigh-useless, but nonetheless offer a three since it at least had a little bit of effort put into it.

spzr: the included tileset, being 1.23, has a limit of 1020 tiles. And while it indeed scrapes that limit, it doesn’t offer thousands of tiles. Yes, I am an anal-retentive dipwad.

This is a level that appears to have been made for Battle duels, or perhaps an ODT. It has a filename that prevents you from “directly” hosting it, and a password. These two things combined mean that it’s kind of a pain in the (-) to try it out.

As far as the level itself, it has a few considerable problems. A player could hide in the starting areas, rendering LRS and Roast Tag highly undesirable here, and an ODT (the only thing that would really be appropriate) impossible. All the stuff – powerups, two carrots, and some gun 9 ammo – is in the center of the level. Thus an already unbearably tiny level is focused further into its center, essentially a black hole. If a player is not in the center, it is either cowardice or blunder. Or LRS, but as I already said, LRS won’t really work here because of the starting areas.

I can’t really rate this level. It’s too small to play properly in anything except an ODT, but the starting areas make ODT impossible. It is, by and large, unplayable because of that.